Anybody that's played football likely has been asked that question, and probably even asked it themselves, dozens of times. It's just ahead of "what's your 40 time?" and "how much do you weigh?" in the football-playing lexicon of standard questions.

NFL Training Camp is a great time for rookies like Dion Jordan to work on technique, says SN's Ross Tucker. (AP Photo)

The truth is that those numbers mean little, and the cusp of NFL training camps is perhaps the best evidence.

I understand our society's obsession with measurables. All that mattered to me when I began lifting weights in junior high was bench pressing 200 pounds, and then weighing 200 pounds—and both of those targets went up year after year as I set new goals. I totally get it. In fact, I see it firsthand every day with the parents and student-athletes that use GoBigRecruiting.com, a service I started during my last year in the NFL to improve the recruiting process for families and college coaches.

Parents and prospects constantly want to update their physical testing numbers and see how it compares to others. It's tough to blame them. So much of collegiate recruiting is based on a recruit's height/weight/speed ratio that its importance gets ingrained in the minds of the people vying for those precious few scholarships.

That infatuation continues, or at least did for me, all the way through the pre-draft process. As a late round prospect out of an Ivy League school, I would spend hours looking at the testing numbers of other prospects and see how I stacked up. Just like the college recruiting process, those numbers play a big part in where a player gets drafted, especially for guys like me that are from a small school.

It is not like you need to have played the game to care about this stuff, either. Why do you think so many people watch the NFL Combine on TV? There is something about freakish athletes posting mind-blowing numbers that intrigues us all.

The reality at the NFL level is that those measurables mean little. Sure, there is a basic standard or minimum you need in order to be considered a candidate for pro football at the highest level, but after that it is about skill, not raw physical ability. I've seen a few offensive linemen who could bench press 600 pounds that were absolutely terrible. Conversely, I've seen a couple of guys who could barely press 315 pounds off their chest yet were phenomenal players.

That's because being a professional means becoming proficient at your job. The best players, especially along the lines but really at every position, are the most efficient at their skill. It's not all that different from plumbers, carpenters and electricians, really. You can always work to improve your craftsmanship, but like anything else in life, there will be people for whom it comes more naturally than others.

That's why the biggest point of emphasis for NFL players is on improving technique. In fact, I'm often asked what I would have wished for if I could have been granted one NFL-related wish during my playing days. It's an easy one: better technique. Not bigger, taller, faster, stronger or quicker. Not even longer arms, although that would've been nice. I really would've just wanted to be better with my hand placement and my footwork.

But there is no magic genie, so players have to cultivate it the old-fashioned way. It is a tireless process that is especially important right now, during the last days before camp and real football begin. But don't just take my word for it.

"My typical July involves no running conditioning at all," Giants Pro Bowl right guard Chris Snee told me recently on SiriusXM Radio. "It's all position-specific work at this point."

"I just find a field somewhere or even go in my backyard and work on my first two steps. If you just get those two steps in the right place, quickly and powerfully, that is a huge part of the battle right there. Everyone is big and strong at this level. Technique wins."

Couldn't have said it better myself. If you still don't believe me, consider that the best players I ever played with or against were also typically the most technically skilled.

For example, Richard Seymour was the best defensive lineman I ever played against. He had tremendous natural ability, don't get me wrong, but there are a lot of guys with similar ability. What made Richard special was his unbelievable natural leverage and ability to play low, even though he was 6-foot-6. It seemed he always got his hands in the right place, whether he was bull-rushing with both hands in his opponent's chest or using a "one-arm stab" technique to take advantage of his reach.

Same goes for Ray Lewis. I've said for years that he was the best defensive player I ever went against, and it had little to do with his size and speed. What separated Ray was that it felt like he often knew what play we were running, and his "butt and shed" technique every time I tried to block him was impeccable. You can only perfect a skill like that, which entails perfect placement of the butt of your hands in the armpits of the blocker and then locking your arms out, through hours of hard work. Hard work that obviously paid huge dividends for him, because I couldn't block him.

Need further evidence? Darrelle Revis is not the best cornerback in pro football because he is a physical phenom. In fact, his former teammate with the Jets, Antonio Cromartie, is superior to him in every physical category. Revis, however, is a technician. He's mastered his craft and commands $16 million per year as a result.

And it's not just defensive guys. Do you have any idea how much time Tom Brady spends on his mechanics and just throwing the football? Even at age 35 and as one of the most accomplished players in NFL history, Brady is obsessed with honing his skills. That's how he became elite—not because he was bigger, faster or had a stronger arm than other quarterbacks.

The point is that it is rare (if not impossible) that somebody can get by on physical measurables alone. There's a warehouse full of guys that tried and failed.

What wins in the NFL is "hands and feet," and that's why any NFL player worth their salt will be working almost entirely on technique throughout the offseason, but especially emphasizing it these last few days before training camp. It's a misnomer that football is all about who is the biggest, fastest and strongest, and that is something I wish I would've known when I was younger so that I could've paid more attention to it.

Maybe we should change the standard question from "how much do ya bench" to "how sound is your technique"?

Ross Tucker is a 2001 Princeton graduate who played seven years in the NFL for five different teams before retiring in 2008. He wrote previously for Sports Illustrated, ESPN and Sports USA before joining Sporting News in July 2013.